Regarding the 2020 Coin of the Year, John Regitko writes:

Any legal tender coin is acceptable for Coin of the Year nomination. This has been true for all 37 years of COTY competition. When a government authorizes a coin in any shape, style orcomposition, be it for circulation or not, it is still a coin.

Creating a small piece of sculpture, slapping on a denomination and calling it a coin, as your writer mentions, would produce a fantasy piece, ineligible for COTY competition.

The basic criticism in this letter rests in the notion that only circulating coins are actual coins. This ignores all non-circulating legal tender coinage, which eliminates the vast majority ofcommemorative issues.

Coin of the Year provides criteria for nominating and judging in ten specific categories. One of the ten categories is for Best Circulating Coinage. Another, Best Bi-Metallic Coinage oftencontains many circulating coins.

Many of the other categories relate to commemorative themes such as Most Historically Significant, Best Contemporary, Most Artistic and Most Inspirational, any of which can contain circulatingtypes alongside coins produced in precious metals.

Of the remaining four categories; Best Gold and Best Silver obviously host non-circulating coins. The Best Crown category centers on a diameter range and the Most Innovative category seeks to giverecognition to technological and stylistic developments in coin production.

The goal of the COTY program is to honor and encourage outstanding coin design and marketing efforts worldwide. We hope these awards spark creativity, imagination and significant development incoin production and promotion.

Coin of the Year, an award for excellence in coinage design first issued in 1984 by Krause Publications in Iola, Wisconsin, has become the ultimate international recognition of mints and theirartists, growing into the community's most coveted award for contemporary world coins.

Today, artists and mints worldwide openly compete for one of the Krause Coin of the Year categories. The announcement of the Coin of the Year is one of the highlights of the annual World MoneyFair and the winner in internationally celebrated. any remaining mintage of the winner quickly sells out and coin values rise dramatically on the secondary market. this is, indeed, solid evidence ofthe global acceptance, standing and success of the annual award.

The Coin of the Year award had a humble origin as a pet project of Krause Publications' founder Chester "Chet" Krause and former Krause Publications' President and CEO Clifford "Cliff" Mishler. byhighlighting medallic art with merit, Mishler hoped to encourage world mints to improve the art of coins. Few could have imagined how the brainchild of these two pioneering men would be so wellreceived today.

An international panel of judges nominates and votes for coins in each category. Category winners then compete for the grand price - the Krause Coin of the Year.

For more Coin of the Year news, see: https://www.numismaticnews.net/category/coin-of-the-year-news

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
NEW BOOK: COIN OF THE YEAR (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v18n05a05.html)
BOOK REVIEW: COIN OF THE YEAR' (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v18n30a08.html)
LATVIA HONEY COIN NAMED COIN OF THE YEAR WINNER (https://www.coinbooks.org/v23/esylum_v23n05a27.html)